Podcasts
Podcasts are a great way to provide information and experiences in the form of an audio recording, similar to radio, but that you can listen to anytime you want. I love the freedom they provide for both the creator and the listener. You don’t have to be a radio talk show host to get your ideas out there and you don’t have to tailor your life around the timing of when you chose to listen to a podcast. You can listen to it while your cleaning your house, driving to work, or even while your just chilling out with some popcorn on the couch. I personally love podcasts and I never thought that I would ever create my own but I did and it was a really cool experience. For Teachers If I were to create a podcast in the future I think I would create a series related to my classroom activities. I would want to share any cool assignments or activities I came up with and how they went in the class and possible changes I could have made to make it better. I would create this for other teachers and for myself. I think other teachers could benefit because they might get some new ideas or use my ideas as launching points for their own projects. As beneficial as it might be for others I think that I would be the person who would actually benefit from it the most. Having the ability to go back and review my immediate thoughts on an activity I did in class would be such a great tool. By the time I’m ready to do the particular activity again, an entire year will have probably elapsed. This leaves me with a lot of things I probably forgot since the last time I did the project, like what didn’t really work so well and what the kids really responded to. A podcast could become essentially an education journal for me and it would be a lot easier than trying to write down every thought I had after I tried something in the class. For Students I could also use podcasts as a resource for my students. I could record my lectures for the students to listen to again if they needed to. After taking my own courses in college that offered Tegrity as resource, I definitely see the benefits to doing something like this in my own classroom. I took a biology class that was recorded using Tegrity and I used it when studying for exams and when I was unable to make it to class. It was a recording of the lecture that went through the PowerPoint slides as the teacher talked. It was awesome to be able to go back and make sure I got everything down in my notes the first time. You can also pause the lecture if you need to go to the bathroom or get caught up in something else; this was great because you can’t exactly pause your professor while she’s talking during class. I loved it and I think it would be a great thing to offer to my students because there’s a lot of other things that go on in life besides school and sometimes it can be hard to give a lecture the attention it needs. Having the ability to go back and listen to a lecture would be great for students who couldn’t focus on any given day for any number of reasons because there’s a lot that goes on in life and using a tool like this allows for the students to pay attention to lecture on their own terms. Disclaimer: Because podcasts are purely audio, accommodations may need to be made for students with hearing impairments. These accommodations could include a transcript of the podcast or providing a resource such as a sign language teacher to transcribe the information.